Court Overturns Mom`s Conviction In Fetal Drug Case

TALLAHASSEE -- A woman who took cocaine shortly before giving birth was wrongly convicted of delivering drugs to a minor, the Florida Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.

The court`s decision quashes any further attempt in Florida to prosecute women whose drug use led to their newborns testing positive for a controlled substance.

``The Legislature expressly chose to treat the problem of drug-dependent mothers and newborns as a public health problem ... It considered but rejected imposing criminal sanctions,`` said the court opinion, which borrowed the words of a lower court judge.

Because all seven justices agreed state law had been misinterpreted -- and they are the final arbiters of state law -- no appeal is possible.

This was the strongest judicial decision to date in the United States against punishment of new mothers who are addicted to drugs.

``These criminal prosecutions were born out of hysteria. But medical evidence has emerged that crack baby symdrome is no worse than fetal alcohol syndrome,`` said attorney James Green of West Palm Beach, who intervened in the case for the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Florida.

Jennifer Johnson, 26, the Altamonte Springs woman whose 1989 conviction was overturned, served only a few months in jail after her arrest. But that seperated her from her daughter, Jessica, just shortly after the birth.

Johnson was sentenced to 15 years of probation for using cocaine before the delivery of Jessica in 1989 and her son Carl in 1987. She told a state investigator that she smoked pot and crack cocaine three to four times every other day during Jessica`s fetal development, and she told a doctor she used crack during labor.

Johnson is now in a drug treatment program, and her four children are being cared for by family members.

``She has wanted to parent them but it`s been impossible while being harassed by the state,`` said Lynn Paltrow of the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, one of Johnson`s attorneys.

Paltrow said it was particularly reprehensible to prosecute drug-addicted mothers because there have been only about 135 drug treatment beds available in Florida for the estimated 4,500 pregnant women in need of such services.

In 1987, the Florida Legislature included drug dependency of a newborn as a definition of child abuse.

-- POLICE CHASES: Police officers can be held responsible if an innocent bystander is hurt during a chase. The court`s 4-3 decision is based on a Pinellas County case that involved up to 20 police and sheriff`s vehicles in a 25-mile chase that reached speeds up to 120 miles per hour. Three people -- a man being chased by police because he had run a red light and two sisters whose car he hit during the chase -- died. The deaths came after sheriff`s deputies ignored an order to end the chase.

-- JUDICIAL ETHICS: In a 5-1 decision, the court upheld the constitutionality of a prohibition on judges publicly endorsing candidates for public office. The judicial canon had been challenged by Fourth District Court of Appeal Judge Hugh Glickstein, who in 1990 wrote a public letter endorsing the merit retention election bid of then-Supreme Court Chief Justice Leander Shaw.

-- JUVENILES: Children who run away from foster homes and skip school cannot be put in secure detention centers. In a 5-2 decision, justices recognized the frustration of judges dealing with children who have been taken away from their parents because of abuse and neglect and who may become deliquent because of that abuse.

-- MINIMUM MANDATORY: In a 4-3 decision, justices upheld a Broward judge`s decision to grant probation and order drug rehabilitation for Carrick Scates, convicted of purchasing crack cocaine from an undercover deputy within 1,000 feet of a school.

The Fourth District Court of Appeal had overturned the lower court, saying state law requires a three-year minimum mandatory prison term for the crime. But the Supreme Court ruled another state law gives trial judges the discretion to order rehabilitation as an alternative to prison.

-- STOLEN GOODS: Sellers of stolen property can be ordered to reimburse the buyer if the item is recovered by police and returned to its rightful owner. The court ruled that a purchaser suffering both a loss of property and a loss of the purchase price must be characterized as a ``victim.``

-- SALES TAX: Florida`s right to tax newspaper and magazine sales was upheld in a 4-2 decision. Sales tax on newspapers have been collected since December 1990.